Stock Market & Financial Investment News

California pursues Tesla as New Jersey mulls sales plan, Bloomberg saysCalifornia lawmakers offered Tesla regulatory changes to speed-up a planned $5B battery “gigafactory” as New Jersey legislators filed a motion that would permit the company to restart electric car sales there, according to Bloomberg citing a comments from Tesla's vice president of business development Diarmuid O’Connell. Reference Link

Tesla hits session low, bouncesThe stock hit a session low at $250.79 but has since rebounded to $252.96. At that price next resistance is at prior support at $257.92. Support is at the session low and then at $248.30.

Tesla falls as early rally attempt fades, levels to watchShares are at $263.44 at time of writing, lower by 1.2% as an early rally attempt falters. An important level to watch is the 50-day moving average which was last at $257.58. That is now the next major downside objective. A break below the 50-day would end the uptrend that began off lows in April of this year. Resistance is at $265.25.

UBS sees Tesla falling short of expectations, downgrades to SellUBS analyst Colin Langan downgraded Tesla Motors to Sell from Neutral and cut his price target for shares to $210 from $220. The electric carmarker closed Monday up $7.60 to $282.26. The stock's current valuation implies deliveries of over 1.5M vehicles by 2025 plus full utilization of storage capacity, Langan tells investors this morning in a research note. His analysis indicates that Tesla's current planned 15GWs of storage capacity may be larger than the market in 2020, however. Further, the launch of the lower priced Model X electric car in Q3 "increases production complexity putting delivery targets at risk," Langan writes. He points out the stock has jumped 40% since the anticipation of the storage announcement. The analyst also expects other luxury carmakers to launch competing electric cars. Langan thinks Tesla's storage and auto volume growth will disappoint expectations. The stock is currently down $10 to $272.26 in pre-market trading.

On The Fly: Top stock stories at middayStocks on Wall Street were slightly higher at midday in the first trading day of a week that will be light on domestic economic data but heavy on earnings reports. Investors will be receiving profit reports from about 25% of the companies on the S&P 500 this week, making this the highest volume earnings week of this season. ECONOMIC EVENTS: In the U.S., no major data was released. In Europe, Greece reopened its banks three weeks after closing as the country worked out another bailout agreement. The country announced it has started the process of paying off its creditors, including the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, with a bridge loan it just received. COMPANY NEWS: Lockheed Martin (LMT) agreed to buy the Sikorsky Aircraft business from United Technologies (UTX) for $9B, noting the price is "effectively reduced" to $7.1B after taking into account tax benefits resulting from the transaction. Shares of Lockheed, which also reported better than expected second quarter results and increased its fiscal year guidance, gained nearly 2% after the Sikorsky announcement and saying it will conduct a strategic review of its government IT infrastructure services business and technical services business... Shares of Morgan Stanley (MS) shares were little changed near noon after the bank reported earnings and revenue, excluding certain adjustments, that topped analysts' consensus forecasts... SunEdison (SUNE) announced a deal to acquire Vivint Solar (VSLR) for approximately $2.2B, payable in a combination of cash, shares of SunEdison common stock and SunEdison convertible notes. In connection with the proposed acquisition of Vivint Solar, SunEdison has entered into a definitive purchase agreement with a subsidiary of TerraForm Power (TERP) which, concurrently with the completion of SunEdison's acquisition of Vivint, will acquire Vivint Solar's rooftop solar portfolio, consisting of 523 MW expected to be installed by year-end 2015, for $922M in cash. Shares of Vivint rose 44% following the announcement, while SunEdison's stock gained 4% and TerraForm dropped 3%. Fellow residential solar installer SolarCity (SCTY), which is backed by Tesla's (TSLA) Elon Musk, rose 7% following the deal in the space. MAJOR MOVERS: Among the notable gainers was Exelixis (EXEL), which rallied 43% after the company reported that a study of cabozantinib in metastatic renal cell carcinoma met its primary endpoint of significant improvement in progression-free survival. The shares were indicated to rise even more in early pre-market trading, but lost some of their gains after Bristol-Myers (BMY) announced that its Opdivo study was stopped early after showing superior overall survival in a Phase 3 study of previously treated patients with advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Bristol-Myers rose a bit less than 1% to trade near $70 per share after its own announcement. Also higher was PayPal (PYPL), which gained more than 5.5% in its first day of trading after being spun out of eBay (EBAY). Meanwhile, eBay shares rose over 2%. Cal-Maine Foods (CALM) dropped 8% after posting lower than expected sales and profits in its fourth quarter and warning that while it should have an adequate supply of its primary feed ingredients, the company expects that prices will be "volatile" in the year ahead. Also lower were shares of several gold miners, including Barrick Gold (ABX) and Newmont Mining (NEM), which each fell about 11%, as gold prices declined about 2% near midday. INDEXES: Near midday, the Dow was up 31.66, or 0.18%, to 18,118.11, the Nasdaq was up 9.81, or 0.19%, to 5,219.96, and the S&P 500 was up 2.82, or 0.13%, to 2,129.46.